So, why do I want to start a blog?

I turn 30 in April and have tried to lose weight since I became body conscious at around the age of 15, and if anything I just got bigger. I have lost some weight, getting down to about 90kgs each time, but then I either lose patience with it, relax a bit from it or life blows up and the weight either gradually or quickly creeps back on.

In primary/high school I was always bigger than most of the other girls. Going to an all girls school probably didn't help either because girls can be really cruel and pick on anyone who is different. I don't recall being too self concious about it until about age 14 or so, and as a result started going to the gym. I don't remember making the connection between weight and food until much later, not sure why, just never really came up.

At my heaviest I was 110kgs or so. My lightest that I can remember was 84 and that was when I was 15 and going to the gym a lot. I remember being so proud of it, and then went on a trip with the family to Sydney and put on 6 kilos very quickly. That was the first time I remember being so discouraged at it.

Dad has always been overweight and my sisters and I were also overweight for a large portion of our childhoods. Even though chocolate and chips were sometimes food, they were always readily available at home, so why have fruit when you can have something that is tastier? Even the extended family were on the larger side, a second cousin once commented that family reunions were always a "bouncing off the boobs" event. I guess this contributes a bit to not thinking that it's a bad thing to be so overweight.

By the end of high school I had become increasingly aware and ashamed of my size and shape but didn't really know what to do about it, it was all too hard to deal with, too complicated, and I was probably too afraid of failing. This continued through to uni and my honors year, where I did what most uni students do and gained even more weight, bringing me up to 110kgs by the end of my honors year. At this point I got a job in Singapore so moved over there, into a long distant relationship, and into living out of home for the first time. This is also when I remember my first series of dieting beginning in earnest. My youngest sister had started on the south beach diet and lost quite a bit of weight, so I tried it myself too. It was great, lost 7kgs in 3 weeks, which of course has set up the mindset of the quick and easy win with weight loss, regardless of how sustainable or unsustainable it is. I still carry with me the mindset that slow weightless is bad and get unmotivated very quickly it feels like. Overall while I was in Singapore I lost 20kgs, which was great, but then I moved back home, got into another relationship, and the weight started coming on again.

Then the family was rocked by the diagnosis of cancer for my youngest sister. This continued for 3 years until she passed away in 2009. In that time I got married, was back down to 90kgs, but then she passed away and I coped by emotionally eating for a few years. I know I still have issues with this.

This year, it feels like things are different. I left my husband in May, and I'm trying to take back control of my life. I am now sitting at 102kgs so not the heaviest I've been but still not great.

Diet I know I need to improve. Exercise I know I need to do better in, but the thing that I really think I need to focus on is the mindset/mental issues. I've never really looked at those before, all I've done is try to hide away and ignore any of them,nthinking that if i do that then they'll just go away. Clearly they haven't and clearly they need to be addressed so that I can be the best person I can be. I'm not aiming for tiny, I'm not aiming for super skinny, I'm aiming for healthy, for fitness, for strength. I want to be resilient, self reliant, My best self.

They say that you should do the thing that scare you, that way you know it's going to be worth it, and you'll learn something from it. So as a challenge to myself I have signed up for Michelle Bridges' 12 week body transformation course, which starts in mid november. The dates for it were almost enough to put me off doing it, to be honest. It's over Christmas. There'll be Christmas parties not to mention Christmas say and New Years. But then I had a voice in my head tell me that were those 5 or 6 days enough to make me put off getting healthier for another 3 months? And then that'll put the next one over my birthday and Easter, so I guess thre is never really a right time to do it. So I have accepted that on the days that there are parties I won't be perfect at following the program, and that's ok. Life has to happen too right? And I'll just make sure there is extra exercise in there, and I pick right back up the next day... Let's see how that goes...

So, that then brings us to why a blog? I figure if I put this in a public ish forum, give the link to my fellow 12WBTers so they can provide input, as well as accountability to me that I'm more likely to stick with it, and sort through some of the mental issues that are bound to come up. Plus it gives me apace to vocalise my struggles, achievements, issues, questions, ponderances. Use this blog like a journal, where I can write what I'm feeling, however I'm feeling it, but keeping me more accountable than a pen and paper journal.

That's where I'm at right now. In the middle of the warm up, before the pre season, before it all starts in November. Am I nervous? Yes. Do I think I can do it? I'm not really sure, but I know that I want try it, and I know that it'll challenge me, and I know I'll learn from it regardless of what happens.

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